Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose

Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose

Roslyn Fuller

Language: English

Pages: 266

ISBN: 1783605421

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Democracy is sold to us on its ability to deliver equal opportunity, and to give every citizen an equal voice. Yet time and again we see that this is not the case: power and spoils alike flow to the few, while the many are left with no recourse. What is wrong with democracy?

Nothing, says Roslyn Fuller: what we have simply isn’t democracy—it’s a perversion of it, created by poorly designed electoral systems, weak campaign laws, and broad limitations on participation and representation at nearly every level. Backing her argument with copious empirical data analyzing a wide variety of voting methods across twenty nations, Fuller makes her conclusion irrefutable: if we want true democracy, we have to return to the philosophical insights that originally underpinned it, and thoroughly reexamine the goals and methods of democracy and democratic participation. A radical, damning, yet at the same time fiercely hopeful work, Beasts and Gods aims to reconfigure the very foundations of modern society.

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To keep the bureaucracy of a powerful country like Athens ticking over on a day-to-day basis, and the Athenians had some interesting ideas on who this should be. Everyone. In democratic Athens, the people held all political power in the state. This meant that they had to initiate and fulfil all public matters themselves. There was no king or other authority figure that they could turn to. Since each person enjoyed the same degree of responsibility for state decisions and actions, they also had.

Small groups by catering to their interests, because even a marginal group of committed voters can make the difference between electoral victory and defeat. This gives minorities who are organized and patient enough a chance to get their way on issues important to them by applying pressure to a candidate who needs their vote at the right time. It’s not particularly effective, but it does sometimes work. In a more direct democracy without elected politicians, the option of getting things done by.

Including tax holidays, refunding of tax on construction and operating costs’.10 In other words, in these cases the Bank uses public funds (because the public is taking out a loan to provide all of this, which it will eventually have to pay back with interest) to give private corporations subsidies and tax breaks in exchange for buying or building a public asset. This means that people in developing countries are literally paying wealthy companies to do business with them. Not only is.

Bribery and vote-skewing already present on the national level. In this grim picture, only one thing holds out hope for citizen involvement in international politics: non-governmental organizations. Non-governmental organizations, or ‘NGOs’, as they are usually called, are associations that pursue an issue of specific interest to their members, and they enjoy a very positive image as ‘empowering’ movements that work towards improving the collective good. In fact, hardly a day goes by without a.

Ladder and put themselves at the top. This turned out to be a big mistake. All sizzle and no steak: the Roman system rots at the core Rome’s entire political system was rigged in favour of the very people who held power. There were, however, still fewer positions of power available than there were elites who wanted to fill them. Even very privileged Romans were thus constantly involved in a game of political ‘musical chairs’ in which they continually fought the danger of being cut out of the.

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